1/08/2010 @ 5:30PM

Tweets (And More) Of The Week: Bras Gone Viral

By Thursday afternoon our Facebook feeds were mysteriously full of friends’ status updates reading: black white black beige (boring!). These were soon followed by the more descriptive and intimate purple lace zebra stripes multicolored with tiny flowers.

It didn’t take long (nothing on Facebook ever does) to figure out that the colors were in fact the colors of friends’ bras. The point was allegedly breast cancer awareness: “Write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY women, no men. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men wonder why the women have a color in their status…..LOL!”

The viral campaign was a raging success in terms of audience reach–friends from all across the U.S. and overseas revealed bras of teal, plaid and cream with red polka dots. But what about impact of purpose? That is the question we put to the ForbesWoman Facebook and Twitter communities: Approve or disapprove of social networking campaigns to take cancer awareness “viral”? The response was fast and furious.

“Approve–it doesn’t harm anyone and everyone is talking about–bringing attention/awareness,” tweets amytripp5. Crazyballerina jumps right on: “The ‘color’ campaign got attention and more women are aware. I put the color and pasted the link to the breast cancer site.”

Karissa Nicole makes a solid link between the campaign and responsibility on Twitter: “yes I update mine on FB. Reminds me to have gratitude that I am not with that disease and to have compassion for those w it.” Earlier, IndawayDesigns writes, “I think it is all in fun, what can it hurt I SUPPORT IT!”

“Disapprove,” tweets Kami Kovacs. “It was confusing to those who didn’t hear about it,” she points out, speaking of the many Facebook users who didn’t get the e-mail message explaining the colors, “and there’s very little relevance. Let’s not make this sexy.”

Indeed the majority of our communities agree that the bra color ripple will have little impact on more important issues including adequate health care, lack of attention paid to other diseases that kill women and the millions in spending in breast cancer marketing and advertising.

“I’m so sick of breast cancer organizations trying to make this cause ‘sexy,’” says Jayne Huddleston on Facebook. “It is a marketing machine that is in your face everywhere you turn. It is not the biggest health threat to women, yet their marketing overshadows all other health problems. The other just has the misfortune not to affect a sexy part of the body.”

Sharon Danley concurs, saying that campaigns like this seem to undermine “WOMEN’S HEALTH which also includes heart attacks, which outnumber breast cancer.”

“I’m absolutely not doing it,” chimed in Ratso Rizzo on Facebook. “Here’s why. For two days I saw these moronic posts in which women were just posting a color and nothing else. I wasn’t interested in why they were posting it so I’m assuming a lot of other people weren’t either. Therefore, it didn’t raise awareness. If you want to raise awareness actually post something about breast cancer.”

But Huddleston was not done proving her point on “sexy” or “fun” breast cancer awareness campaigns: “When it comes to ‘awareness,’ do you know anyone who is not ‘aware’ of breast cancer? But, are they also aware that it is now one of the most treatable forms of cancer with a high survival rate, that it is not the biggest health threat to women, and that more money is spent on salaried employees creating a marketing campaign than is spent on research and patient support.”

“I’m going to start posting the color of my underwear in support of colorectal cancer today,” jokes Karen Glynn Webb on Facebook. “Everyone on board? Good. Brown.” Still waiting to see if that goes viral.

Readers, share your views on the breast cancer viral campaign. Is it good fun and good will or does it miss the mark? Where do you stand in the debate?

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